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Monday, November 11, 2013

Typhoon Haiyan: survivors walk like zombies

The Zombie Apocalypse is a well-known American trope that emerged from the literary horror genre spawned by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818. Throughout the rest of the 1800s, various undead themed books were published, and by the 1920s and 30s, HP Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe brought the horror genre and with it, zombies, into the modern age.

Nowadays says Wiki, “The turn of the millennium coincided with a decade of box office successes in which the zombie sub-genre experienced a resurgence”.

And, with zombies, came the zombie apocalypse. The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has become a staple of modern popular art.” (Wikipedia)

It has become so popular in fact, that the Center for Disease Control spoofed their own selves in their preparedness booklet Zombie Pandemic, touted as a fun way that “demonstrates the importance of being prepared in an entertaining way that people of all ages will enjoy. (source)

If there are those among you who don’t enjoy the zombie genre, myself included, the image of the zombie is still easily recognized. The shambling, stumbling walk, the insensate eyes, the mumbling, the thousand yard stare…all indicative of zombie behavior. As a matter of fact, zombies are much like the shell shocked WW1 vets returning home from the horrors of battle, so named because they seemed as empty and void as a shell. Shell Shock is “a reaction to the intensity of the bombardment and fighting that produced a helplessness appearing variously as panic, or flight, an inability to reason, sleep, walk or talk.”

Shell Shock: This is Private Eagerfield. (WW1)
Eagerfield's facial expression is also typical
of von Graefe's sign where there is an immobility of the
upper eyelid and downward rotation of the eye.(source)

Part of shell shock in the WW1 vets, and any person today who has endured a trauma ,may not only become shell shocked but their condition may also include neurasthenia, as it did for many WW1 vets. Neurasthenia is a condition was explained as being a result of exhaustion of the central nervous system's energy reserves.

In summary, when populations endure mass trauma to the point where comprehension is impossible, in other words seeing horrors on a scope heretofore unseen or unexperienced, shell shock and nervous system failure often resulted.

Just like zombies.

With all that in mind, here is a news piece today which refers to the Filipinos who endured the “worst storm on record” walking around like zombies.

SUPER TYPHOON HAIYAN: Survivors 'walk like Zombies'November 10, 2013 – TACLOBAN, Philippines - One of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, with huge waves sweeping away entire coastal villages and devastating the region’s main city. Super typhoon Haiyan destroyed about 70 to 80 percent of the area in its path as it tore through Leyte province on Friday, said police chief superintendent Elmer Soria. As rescue workers struggled to reach ravaged villages along the coast, where the death toll is as yet unknown, survivors foraged for food as supplies dwindled or searched for lost loved ones. “People are walking like zombies looking for food,” said Jenny Chu, a medical student in Leyte. “It’s like a movie.” Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by surging sea water strewn with debris that many said resembled a tsunami, leveling houses and drowning hundreds of people in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the typhoon-prone Southeast Asian nation.

Foraging...stumbling around insensate...blank eyes unable to comprehend the scope of the damage...lives lost on a mass scale...It is just heartbreaking to think of so many people and children who are affected by this disaster.

"Witnesses and officials described chaotic scenes in Leyte’s capital, Tacloban, a coastal city of 220,000 about 580 km (360 miles) southeast of Manila which bore the brunt, with hundreds of bodies piled on the sides of roads and pinned under wrecked houses." (source)

Bodies litter the debris-strewn streets of the obliterated city of
Tacloban, Philippines
after Typhoon Haiyan came through in November 2013

"On a stretch of road on the way into Tacloban city centre, just past a lone white coffin with gold-painted handles, lay a mass of dead, bloated bodies. Men, women, cats, dogs and pigs were piled in a heap against a stone house with a metal roof bent upwards like a question mark. Its residents stared out at the chaos below like zombies." (source)

Now imagine when all the world at the same time is like this.

Typhoon Haiyan hit Tacloban city, in Leyte province in central Philippines on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2013. It was one of the most powerful typhoons on record, ever. Have you noticed that the storms that come are getting bigger and bigger?

Remember Joplin? The tornado? Weatherman Mike Bettes bursting into tears, affected and unable to articulate the scale of the disaster?

The bible says that in the Tribulation, these disasters will come one upon another, faster and faster as birth pangs upon a woman. There will be constant worldwide disasters.

"And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken." (Luke 21:25-26)

This verse is saying that people will drop dead on the spot when they see the things that will be happening.

"When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place." (Revelation 6:12-14)

Demons will pour out from hell, attack any and all people not saved by the grace of Jesus after the rapture took the believers during the age of Grace. Mountains will fall, oceans will be as blood, a third of the ships of the sea will sink and millions will drown.

Am I trying to scare you? Yes. Yes. I have talked with too many people that have a casual view of the wrath of God. I have spoken with too many people who have a romantic notion of surviving the Tribulation. I hear too many people set aside the day of their salvation, putting it off for trivial pursuits of drinking carousing, playing.

But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed..
Imagine Tacloban city as your city. Zombie-like shell shocked people wandering insensibly, not caring about you or your safety. They attack for a can of tuna, kill over a drink of water. Or you, stepping over maggot ridden bloated dead bodies, yourself coming down with cholera, knowing that where you fall, you die.

God is soon going to pour out his wrath on the entire world, and unless you are saved by the grace of Jesus, you will be one of those left behind to face all this. Just as the poor folks of the Philippines cannot comprehend the devastation of their cities and towns, you cannot, cannot comprehend the wrath of God that is coming. You have no ability to comprehend what it will be like because Jesus said it will be unlike any time in the world's history ever. (Matthew 24:21). There is nothing to compare it to. It will be horrible. Words fail.

"Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Revelation 6:15-17)."The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath." (Psalm 110:5)"How awful that day will be! No other will be like it. It will be a time of trouble for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it." (Jeremiah 30:7)

REPENT NOW! There is nothing casual or romantic or undemanding about this coming time of horror, wrath, and fury from the Almighty God of all creation. Don't set aside the implications of the storms on the horizon. If you repent of your sins now, and appeal to the Judge for forgiveness He will forgive you. You will leave this earth before the time of Jacob's trouble begins, and you will not endure the wrath. (1 Thessalonians 5:9, Revelation 3:10).

Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 4:6-7)

If you do not repent, when we are raptured away you will be left to face an increasingly apocalyptic series of horrors which, if you survive, your mind may simply become zombie-like and your body faint as these things are coming on the earth. And if you die in one of the disasters before you repent, you will spend your eternity in hell paying for your sins in torment and punishment.

Scary? Yes. It is. The fact and certainty of God's wrath is scary. The certainty of His grace and love in His forgiveness is peace. You choose.